NASA official says humans could live and work on moon before 2030

Humans could live and work on the Moon as soon as 2030, a NASA official has claimed. "We're going to be sending people down to the surface and they're going to be living on that surface and doing science," Howard Hu, who leads the Orion lunar spacecraft program for NASA said, according to The Weather Channel.

This came shortly after NASA sent Space Launch System, or SLS, the rocket that took the Orion spacecraft to the Moon. NASA's Artemis mission aims to put the first humans on the Earth's natural satellite as early as 50 years. Artemis I is the first-ever integrated flight test of NASA that was built by the space administration for the very purpose to take humans farther than they've ever been. 

Humans will have habitats and rovers on the moon before 2030: NASA

Not only humans will be living and working on the Moon for 'durations' before 2030, but they will also have habitats and rovers on the ground, the NASA scientist has said. "We are going to be sending people down to the surface, and they are going to be living on that surface and doing science," Hu told the outlet. Human visits to the moon will help us learn a little bit beyond our Earth's orbit and will prove to be a major step when we go to Mars, the NASA official stressed. The 25.5-day Artemis I mission is the first step towards that goal, he reiterated. The Orion uncrewed spacecraft already travelled 232,683 miles from Earth as of Sunday this week. 

"It's the first step we're taking to long-term deep space exploration, for not just the United States but for the world," said Hu. "I mean, we are going back to the Moon, we're working towards a sustainable programme, and this is the vehicle that will carry the people that will land us back on the Moon again," the NASA official noted. 

NASA launched its Artemis 1 mission successfully to orbit from the Launch Complex 39B of the Kennedy Space Center on November 16. NASA confirmed that the journey has turned out to be as planned. The mission saw the Space Launch System (SLS rocket) lift off with a thunderous roar generating 8.8 million pounds of thrust and becoming the world’s most powerful rocket. In a few minutes, Orion will be propelled into orbit and the core stage of the rocket will conduct a trans-lunar injection (TLI) manoeuvre to send Orion out of Earth’s gravitational influence and toward the Moon. The mission is estimated to last 25 days, 11 hours and 32 minutes before a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean on December 11.